The Screams of Dragons #7
“Just asking how you are,” his mother said over dinner after the second call. She slid him a secret smile. “I think Rose might be sweet on you. She seems like a nice girl.”
“Her family’s not nice,” the Gnat said as she took a forkful of meatloaf. “Her one brother’s in jail.”
His mother looked over sharply. “No, he isn’t. He’s in the army. Don’t spread nasty gossip—”
“It’s not gossip. I heard it in town. He’s in jail for fraud, and so was Rose’s dad, for a while, years ago, and no one thinks there’s anything weird about that.
I overheard someone say the whole family is into stuff like that.
They’re con artists. Only people act like it’s a regular job.
” She scrunched up her freckled nose. “Isn’t that freaky? The whole town is—”
“Enough,” his mother said. “I think someone’s pulling your leg, young lady. There is nothing wrong with Rose Walsh or her family. They’re fine people.”
For once, he believed the Gnat. He’d wondered about Rose’s brother ever since he took off a few years ago and Rose said he’d joined the army to fight in Vietnam, but he’d been over thirty, awfully old to sign up.
Con artists. That explained a lot. Rose was conning the elders right now, telling them stories about him. Trying to con him, too, into not wanting powers. He did. He wanted them more than anything. And he was going to find a way to get them.
He spent months researching how to steal powers and learned nothing useful.
It did not seem as if it could be done, and the more he failed to find an answer, the more the jealousy gnawed at him, and the harder it was to focus on keeping the dragons fed and happy.
He had to do worse and worse things, and it made him feel even guiltier about them.
Together with the jealousy, it was like his stomach was on fire all the time.
He couldn’t eat. He started losing weight.
He had to go back to Cainsville. At the very least, the visit would calm the gnawing in his stomach and let him eat.
He would talk his mother into a special trip to Cainsville and he would go see Hannah.
Not the elders. Not Mrs. Yates. Certainly not Rose.
No, he’d visit Hannah. She’d help him set things right.
His plan worked so beautifully that he felt as if the success was a sign. His luck was turning. He asked his mother to go and off they went that Sunday. He arrived to hear that Rose was in the city, and he found Hannah in the playground, tending to an injured baby owl.
“Did a cat get it?” he asked as he walked over.
She’d started at the sound of a voice, and he expected that when she saw it was him, she’d smile. She didn’t. She scooped up the owl and stood.
“Bobby,” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”
“Surprise.” He grinned, but she didn’t grin back. Didn’t even fake it. Just watched him as he opened the gate and walked in. “Is the owl all right?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “Something got him. Maybe a cat. He’s dying.” Another pause. “That’s the worst part. When they’re hurt and I can’t help.”
“You can put it out of its misery.”
She almost dropped the fledgling. “What?”
“I’ll do it. Mercifully. Then you won’t need to feel bad because you can’t help.”
She stared at him like he’d suggested murdering her mother for pocket change. One of the dragons roared, a white-hot burst of flame that blazed through him.
“I’m thinking of you,” he said, glowering at her.
“And I’m not. That isn’t how it works. Rose said you…” she trailed off.
“Rose said what.” He stepped forward.
Hannah shrank, but only a little, before straightening.
“That you don’t understand about the powers.
You think they’re this great gift. There are good parts, sure, but bad, too.
Lots of bad. I woke up in the middle of the night last week because a dog had been hit by a car.
I ran out of the house and my mom helped me take it to the vet’s, but there was nothing we could do.
It was horrible. Just horrible. And I felt it—all of it.
But the only thing that made that dog feel better was having me there through the whole thing, no matter how hard it was.
So I did it. Because that’s my responsibility. ”
Then you’re a fool, he thought. The dog wouldn’t have helped you.
It would have left you by the road to die.
He didn’t say that, because when he looked at her, getting worked up, all he could think was how pretty she’d gotten.
Prettier than any girl in his class, and he wanted to touch her, and when the impulse came, it was like throwing open a locked door.
This was how he could steal her power. Touch her, kiss her…
He bit his lip and rocked back on his heels. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I wasn’t thinking. My dad always said a quick death is better than suffering, and that’s what I meant. Help you and help the baby owl.” He met her gaze. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “It’s all right. I’m just feeling bad about it.” She set the fledgling back on the ground.
“I know.” He stepped closer. “I wish I could make you feel better.”
Another nod, and in a blink, he was there, his arms going around her, his lips to hers.
It wasn’t the first time he kissed a girl.
He’d done more than kiss them, too. Sometimes that was him being wicked, but most times, he didn’t need to be—he knew how to say the right things.
A little charmer, that’s what his mother called him, obviously relieved that her sullen boy had turned out so well.
So he kissed Hannah. It was a good kiss. A sweet and gentle one, for a sweet and gentle girl. But she jerked back and pushed him away hard, as if he’d jumped on her.
“I-I’m sorry, Bobby,” she said. “I have a boyfriend.”
He was about to say “Who?” when he saw her expression.
Liar.
The dragon whipped its tail inside him, lighting his gut on fire. He forced it to settle. He wouldn’t be wicked with Hannah. He just wouldn’t. Not unless he had to.
“It’s Rose, isn’t it?” he said, stepping back, looking down at his sneakers. “She doesn’t like me. She has dreams about me—about a dragon. She told me that, but I don’t understand what it means.”
“She doesn’t either. What did she tell you?”
He shrugged and continued the lie. “Something about a dragon. That’s all I know.”
“It’s two dragons. She dreams they’re fighting over you and screaming awful screams. Then one wins and it…it…”
“It what?”
“Devours you,” she blurted. “We don’t know what it means.”
“What do the elders say?”
“Elders?” She frowned at him. “We didn’t tell the elders. Rose looked it up in books. She has lots of books from her Nana. Some talk about the sight and dreams, but she can’t figure this one out.”
“So she’s never told the elders? About me?”
“Of course not. What’s there to tell?”
He bit his lip. “I get the feeling Rose doesn’t like me very much anymore.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “I get the feeling you don’t either.”
“I…” She swallowed. “I’m fine, Bobby, I just—”
He grabbed her around the waist and kissed her again. This time when she struggled he held on, kept kissing her, and the more she fought, the more certain he was that this was the answer. She had the power. Touch her. Kiss her—
She kneed him between the legs.
He gasped and fell back. “You little—”
“What’s happened to you, Bobby?” she said as she scooped up the bird and backed away. “You never used to be like this.”
“I just wanted to kiss you. You didn’t need to—”
“That wasn’t kissing me. That was hurting me. You want to know why I don’t like you as much?” She held up the owl. “Because they don’t. The animals. You scare them and you scare me.”
She cradled the fledgling against her chest and ran off, leaving him there, gasping for breath in the playground.
He started walking, not knowing where he was going, spurred by the fire in his gut, a fire that seeped into his brain, blinding him. When the rage-fog cleared, he found himself on Hannah’s street. And there, crossing the road, was what he’d come to find, though he only knew as he saw it.
The black cat. Hannah’s matagot kitten. A middle-aged cat now, slinking arrogantly across the street without even bothering to look, as if no car would dare mow it down.
He followed the beast, waiting for it to get to a secluded spot.
In Cainsville, though, there weren’t any secluded spots.
When he’d been young, he’d felt as if he was being merely observed, someone always watching over him, keeping him safe, and he’d loved that.
Now it felt as if he was being spied on, judgmental eyes tracking his every move.
As he moved, he’d sometimes see someone peek out from a house, but they’d only smile and nod.
He might be thirteen, but here he was still a child, innocently out playing hide-and-seek or tag with his friends.
He could cut through yards and steal behind garages and no one would ever come out to warn him off as they would in the city.
Eventually, the cat stopped prowling, and did so in one of the rare secluded spots—the yard of an empty house.
Cainsville had a few of them, not abandoned but empty.
This one was surrounded by a solid fence for privacy, and once Bobby was in that yard, he was hidden.
That is where the beast stopped to clean itself, proving that whatever airs cats might put on, they were very stupid beasts.
As he crept up behind the cat, his hands flexed at his sides.
He had to grab it just right or it would yowl.
Pounce and snatch. That was the trick. Scoop it up by the neck, away from scrabbling claws and then squeeze.
It was simpler than one might think, particularly when the beast was so preoccupied that it didn’t turn even when his foot accidentally scraped a paving stone.
He got as close as he dared. Then he sprang.